Right Wing, Wrong Choice

The French municipal elections that have just been held mostly hit the headlines due to the milestone of Paris electing its first ever female mayor – and that's something we should definitely applaud, especially considering our blog about International Women's Day a few weeks ago. But the bigger story in the long-term, despite it being somewhat relegated to secondary articles, is the strong showing by the Front National, the extremely right wing party led by Marine Le Pen. The FN won control of 11 towns around the country, the most successful it has ever been in local elections, despite (or perhaps because of) its anti-immigrant agenda.

Meanwhile, in the upcoming European Parliament elections, it is likely that the United Kingdom Independence Party – who are not proto-fascists like the FN, but do push an anti-immigrant, isolationist vision of Britain – will likely score its strongest ever results and embarrass the ruling Conservative Party. To some extent, this kind of thing is to be expected in mid-term elections like these – people who are unsatisfied with their lives and see no end to the financial crisis vote as a reaction against the ruling government party. But in other ways, this can be seen as part of a recent trend towards right-wing, anti-immigrant, and even outright fascist parties in elections across Europe.

People in countries like the UK and France increasingly resent people from the poorer countries of the EU and from the rest of the world. They feel that their economic prospects are being damaged and that the newcomers are taking jobs that are 'rightfully' theirs. They are worried that their culture is being degraded and replaced when they walk around their towns and see Polish and Romanian shops and when they sit on the bus and hear people speaking languages they don't understand. Many of them will have looked at the recent referendum on restricting immigration to Switzerland and felt jealous of the Swiss – they want the same opportunity to keep foreigners out, and that's why an increasing number vote for parties of the right.

The truth is that these right wing parties with their focus on foreigners and immigrants are deflecting public pressure from the real cause of our collective problems. People in Western Europe are not poor because of Romanians and Bulgarians, or Somalians and Pakistanis – they're poor because of a recession caused by rich capitalists from their own country. Capitalists who destroyed the financial system through speculation, capitalists who have taken the opportunity the recession presents to fire workers and lower wages, and capitalists who actively want cheap labour from other countries to come to France and Britain in order to keep their profits high.

Parties like UKIP and the Front National are an ideal solution for the rich capitalists that rule the developed countries. They know that such parties are too scary for most people to vote for them, but they also know that having them available works as a way to relieve some of the pressure on the capitalist system. The poorer people of France and the UK vote for the right wing parties, who win a few minor elections here and there. The people then think something is being done about the issues they care about, and they turn their anger away from the capitalists and keep it fixed on people who are even poorer than they are. Rather than repeating this cycle over and over again, it's time for those of us who are consistently losing in this system to identify those who are the real winners that are keeping us down, and target our anger on them instead – it's not the Romanians, it's the rich.

[ French municipal elections, Front National, Marine Le Pen, proto-fascists, Conservative Party, cheap labour, UKIP ]